Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Keeping St. Pete City Council in the Dark

City Councils have always been manipulated by the administration.

The elected body, City Council, is just now beginning to deal
with the effects of a strong mayor who has politicized all most all aspects of
the City Government.

The current problems between Mayor Kriseman and the City Council
began almost immediately after his election. See my post Bay Post InternetTransparency
- No So Much

Below is a Tweet from Steve Kornell.

Steve Kornell via Twitter:

Update on sewage issues and what is happening in our local government.
Recently it was revealed that a previous study recommended keeping the Albert
Whitted Plant open, but this was not shared with the St. Petersburg City
Council. Emails also showed a cozy relationship between the consultants and our
staff. So, as a common sense solution, I suggested adding boiler plate language
into our consultants' contract stating that all consultant studies, drafts and
technical memorandums are
emailed to city council at the same time they are submitted to staff and
administration. This involves adding some standard language to all our
contracts and adding 9 people to an email distribution list. It's common sense
oversight, while at the same time it does not bog down staff in overzealous
requests for information. To my surprise, Mayor Kriseman and the City
Administrator questioned this move. I was even more surprised by the fact that
one of my City Council colleagues voted against this common sense provision
that provides basic oversight before spending millions of your dollars on these
consultants. I just though you should know - but don't take my word for it -
view the video from the November 3rd City Council meeting. I believe every
level of government should be as transparent as possible.

The issue here is the Kriseman administration does not want City
Council to have any information that has not been filtered.

City Councils have always been manipulated by the administration.
The objective is to give City Council just enough information to get them to
approve what the administration wants.

The Kriseman team is refining this information management
approach to an art.

There is something to be said for assuring the final consultant report
sent to City council has met the requirements and specifications of the
contract, but beyond that the final report should be provided to City Council from
the consultant not the administration to ensure that the information gets to
the publics' representatives.

It is unfortunate that the relationship between the City Council,
and the Mayor's office has degenerated to this point but the simple fact is the
City Council, and the public cannot trust the Mayor to be transparent or
honest.